The Newest Watkins

We have had the greatest news this week. We were given the opportunity on Thursday night to adopt a beautiful 11 month old girl. All adoption stories are amazing and Brodi’s story is no exception, in fact it has been a year in the making.

About a year ago BJ’s mom Karen, who we lovingly call our baby broker (almost every opportunity that we have had to adopt a child comes through her), found out about a girl in her ward who was considering placing her child for adoption. We passed on a copy of our birthparent letter and hoped and prayed that Heavenly Father would help guide this birthmom to know what would be the best place for her unborn child. Brodi was born on Sept 24th, her birthmom chose to keep her rather than place her for adoption. We of course were heart broken. Adoption can be very hard; it’s definitely not the easy way to have a baby come into your family. With every opportunity people tell you not to get your hopes up, but come on, that is an impossible thing to do. When it doesn’t happen it is heart breaking to know that a child that could potentially be your child is not going to be. We call these our adoption miscarriages. We allow ourselves a few days to mope around the house eat ice cream and chocolate and then pick ourselves up and move on. The past year we have had several adoption miscarriages. However, there was a difference with Brodi. We couldn't seem to get this little girl out of our heads. We thought about her, worried about her, prayed and fasted for her, and quite frankly in doing all this fell in love with her.

Last May BJ’s mom let us know that Brodi had been living with her grandparents for the past month and there was a possibility that she would be placed for adoption and wanted to know if we would still be interested in adopting her. Brodi?! Are you kidding, of course we would be interested in adopting her. The first Sunday of May, we had a special family fast for her and her family as they faced some very difficult decisions.

Last Saturday night we got a call from BJ’s mom. Brodi’s grandma had just called her and told her that Brodi’s birthmom had made the incredibly difficult, painful and most unselfish decision possible and signed the adoption papers. The grandparents asked if they could meet with us the next day. We were absolutely stunned. This was such a miracle. We knew after all our prayers and fasting that Brodi might finally be able to come and be in our family. There were a couple of other families that they were thinking about as well, so we were once again told not to get our hopes up.

Last Sunday we finally got to meet her. She is so beautiful. In talking to her grandparents they told us that ever since they had first seen our birthparent letter a year ago they felt a connection to us. We told them that we felt the same way. There was still however some things that they needed to talk to their adoption lawyer about. We left their house feeling fairly confident that we would be able to adopt her but knew that we were going to be facing a few more days of agony because we were so close to finally bringing her home but there was no decision yet. Thursday night her grandparents came to our house and told us what we had been hoping to hear for a year. They wanted us to be Brodi’s parents! There are no words to express our happiness. We have learned so much about patience and faith and knowing that even though the answers to our prayers may not come the way we want, we have a loving Father in Heaven who is looking out for us and has his own time table. Brodi is truly a miracle.

Since Brodi is older and her adoption is a bit more complicated it will be a few months until she is able to live with us permanently. This is ok (although heart wrenching) because she is now attached to her birth family and we all want to make her transition into our family smoothly. It would be hard for her (and Sam too for that matter) to suddenly be removed from her home and come and live with people she barely knows. So if you don’t see her with us, we really aren’t making this up. We promise we will have several pictures nearby that we will be more than happy to show off to you if you like it or not.

We are so THRILLED that we will finally be able to bring our Brodi home!!!

Our first family picture with Brodi.

Beautiful Brodi.

A snap shot Brodi's grandma gave us after Auntie Meggie did her magic to it.

Watch out Brodi, we can't wait to just pinch those cute cheeks!!

Sam's First Day of School

Today was Sam's first day of preschool. We have been talking about it forever so it didn't really hit me until today. I think like all mom's I cried all the way home from dropping him off. His teacher said he did really good, although he wanted to eat his lunch about 9:00. Somehow he knew that I had put peaches in there and talked about them all the way until it was time to eat lunch.

Here he is ready to go.

This would be Sam's lunch bag, not his back pack, just to bring things to scale.

Ready or not, here we go.....

Sam is picking out some sandpaper letters with Ms. Janelle.

Ms. Janelle is showing Sam how to wet his sponge.

(Ok. I have to make one small comment on how I posted something the actual day that it happened. Yeah me, maybe there is something to this having a child go to school.)

Yellowstone

This year we went to Utah for a couple of weeks. BJ had a business trip a week before a family reunion (amazing how it happened that way since he was the one who scheduled the meeting). Sam and I decided that we wanted to get out of the heat a week earlier so we traveled to Utah with BJ and hung out that week while BJ worked. The next week we met BJ's family for a family reunion to Yellowstone. It was so great to be with family and had such a great time. Living in the desert we forget how green some places in the US are.

Sam was such a trooper through out the whole trip. Yellowstone is kind of hard for a little guy where everything is so spread apart. There were a lot of naps in the car that week. Here are BJ and Sam after a long car ride.

Here are BJ and Sam at Lake Yellowstone.

Here is Sam killing time waiting for Old Faithful to do it's thing.

Here we are in our yellow shirts for "Yellow"stone. BJ absolutely insisted that the entire family wear matching shirts. He just wouldn't take no for an answer, so here we are in our yellow shirts. (Just kidding, but he was a very good sport about matching with everyone.)

We saw so many bison in the park. These were probably only about a 100 feet from the road.

Would a trip to Yellowstone be the same without posing with a gigantic stuffed teddy bear?

Sam will not pose for pictures right now. Here he is absolutely enthralled by the zipper on my jacket. No time for pictures.

A rare smile caught on film at the Grizzly and Wolf Encounter.

Sam got to go to the Airplane museum with his cousins. He also developed a love for puzzles on this trip. He can put together a 25 piece puzzle almost by himself. Here he is posing with a numbers puzzle.

BJ and Sam at the Bear and Wolf Encounter.

Sam at the Airplane museum. Again not much for posing in front of the camera, even with such a fantastic photo opportunity.

Sam digging for bones at the Dinosaur museum.

I love this picture of Sam walking innocently by as a big dinosaur shadow looms overhead.

Sam at the Imax theater. Sometimes it's hard being small,but he insisted on sitting in his own chair.